The constellations visible in the southern hemisphere at night, invisible during the day, watched over the close to military grade installation.
The upside-down Y of the Cancer constellation saw Barsad on his balcony, turning in slow circles as every part of him replayed the short dance with Clara.
He curled his hands into fists, his fingertips tingling as he continued to slowly dance with his memories.
Barsad hadn't wanted the dance to end, hadn't wanted to release Clara when the song ended.
The entirety of his mind, body, and soul, ached to hold Clara again.
When he'd dropped off the glass bauble, he'd rooted through Clara's dresser drawers and even thumbed through her notepads.
Talia had charged Clara with writing down account numbers, passwords and other pertinent data that could open a lot of actual and virtual doors.
Barsad stopped dancing with the imaginary Clara and pulled out the pair of panties he'd stolen from Clara's room.
It was a pair she was never going to wear, the fabric miniscule.
Barsad didn't know her thoughts about the panties, thinking he'd snagged a pair that had been kissing her intimate flesh.
He fumbled his cock free as he settled on a low sofa and began stroking his hardening length with the panties. Spitting on the sheer fabric as he rubbed it up and down his rigid shaft.
Barsad closed his eyes and saw Rava.
He saw her when she was whole, alive, not close to death.
Barsad stroked himself faster, his breath coming harder as he remembered the last time he'd shared Rava's breath and body.
Barsad licked his lips before he came, remembering picking up Clara's wine glass when she stepped away from the long banquet table.
He'd ran his tongue over her lip prints on the rim of the cut-crystal glass.
She didn't taste like Rava.
But Clara Leroux was alive.
Clara possessed a corporeal body he could touch and a cunt he could fuck.
"Rava," he groaned as his cock spasmed, spurting sticky semen into the scant fabric of the panties.
Somewhat nearby, Clara was just beginning to get her bearings, the evening's festivities had sapped her energy, she'd slept deeply and without interruption.
After she poured herself a rich espresso, she walked out to her private patio, stopping short at the low table and chess set.
She walked closer, smiling as she saw the piece he'd moved to commence a new game.
Bane hadn't broken in through the locked door.
He had entered onto the balcony and set up the chess set, nothing more despite what his primitive thoughts shouted.
The hogs had watched Bane as he'd scaled the outside of the wall, disappearing onto her patio.
They quickly lost interest.
Clara settled in the lounge, narrowing her eyes at the chess board, she was too tired to decide how she was going to play the game.
In a room that was much more plain, monochromatic colors and bed linens, Bane was moving through a thoroughly practiced martial arts kata he'd learned at the place where the blue flowers grew.
He held a tempered steel katana in his large hands, the skin of his scarred knuckles pulled tight as he swung the blade through the crisp, morning air of his patio area, this one overgrown with lush vines.
Bane had made a direct request to allow the vines and flowers to grow as they please, he craved the privacy that came with allowing plants to be, to flourish.
Ras al Ghul had gifted him with the blade while still on the battlefield, surrounded by the fallen.
The steel sang in the brisk, morning air as Bane moved fluidly, his body began to shine with the light sweat that cropped up on his bare, muscular skin.
He stared down at where his fingers overlapped on the carved bone handle of the katana, breathing hard, his mind overlaying his grip on Clara's wrist, how his fingers had overlapped, he could still feel the pounding of her radial artery under the pads of his scarred fingertips.
While Bane settled on the patio floor, lapsing into a mediative state, repeating a mantra that came out mechanically melodical through the front of his mask, down an adjacent hall, Talia skimmed transcripts of conversations that Clara had had, as the Raven, with various people across the globe.
Talia's eyes widened when she saw a familiar term repeated throughout the correspondence with Clara and a billionaire on the Ivory Coast.
Talia knew the casual set of words was a gentle euphemism for materials needed to make bombs.
Talia grew excited as she poured over other communication, a cornucopia of words for genocide, destruction, and the veritable end of fucking days.
Nuclear.
Plutonium.
Uranium.
Sub-atomic particles.
Talia found a treasure trove filled with Clara's high crimes and treason.
Clara had constructed quite the nest for herself amongst the darkness of the dark web, she fluidly navigated the seedy, perverse, and deadly, never even losing a single pin feather.
Talia whistled lowly at the estimated amount of money that Clara had hidden, so well concealed that Talia's techs continued to burn the midnight oil in search of a trail of bird seed, breadcrumbs, or fucking peanut butter cups to find a way to Clara's bountiful loot.
In the most opulent living quarters on the compound, Fabiana sipped her heavily sweetened tea, waking to find her husband's side of the bed empty.
The Crimson King had been informed of activity that had been picked up by his drone, he rushed away from the estate with his closest men before day broke.
Word had gotten to the Crimson King of some men planning a coup. He had his brother and lieutenant working behind the scenes to suss out the truth to those rumors.
If the accusations were true, the attempted saboteur's deaths would serve as a deterrent for future subterfuge.
The end of their lives would serve as horror stories to tell generations of children, in addition to the monster under the bed and the other horned beast in the closet, people would be afraid to even whisper the name of the Crimson King.
Back in her room, Talia washed her face and changed her clothes before walking with a purpose towards Bane's room.
She didn't bother knocking, she never even considered the thought of knocking before she opened any closed door in front of her.
Bane looked over at Talia's intrusion, his mask hid the bulk of his irritation at her sudden encroachment. Her eyes moved over his nearly naked body; beads of sweat rolled down his muscular curves.
The darker pink of his nipples were stiff in the chilly room.
"I wish to talk to the little bird about some chatter I uncovered."
Talia didn't wait for him to answer as she left as quickly as she'd appeared.
Bane joined Talia outside of Clara's room as she knocked softly, waited for a beat, and then unlocked the door.
"Clara," she called, announcing herself, finding the political socialite walking in from the covered patio.
Talia didn't see the fleeting but small smile that pulled at the corners of Clara's lips as her eyes moved over Bane's and how he immediately tried to catch sight of what chess piece she'd moved.
Talia settled in one of the plush chairs as Clara sat down across from her on the loveseat.
"Would you care for a drink dear?"
Clara blew out a low breath, "please," she murmured, "something with equal parts caffeine and something for this," she added as she pointed at the front of her head where a deep ache was growing.
Talia smiled in empathy and prepared them both espressos mixed with a lot of alcohol and topped with luscious, whipped cream.
Talia passed Clara the drink, not wasting another second before laying out paper after paper on the coffee table in front of Clara about the uncovering on the dark web of nuclear ramblings.
Clara knocked back the near-scalding espresso and alcohol fast, desperately needing the hair of every dog in the vicinity, but also time to think. She stared down at her cup as she burned the roof of her mouth swallowing it, wondering how Tallia put together her involvement in nuclear sales. She'd been so careful, had so many firewalls.
Clara had a signal that bounced around the entire globe, the nuclear references that Talia had uncovered were supposed to appear to originate in the Maldives.
As Clara concentrated on finishing her drink in order to avoid speaking, she could feel Bane's presence as he tried to scrutinize the chessboard.
Clara's smile was hidden with copious alcohol and whipped cream.
Talia waited patiently for Clara to finish the entire cup before speaking. "Another my dear?"
Clara stared down at the empty cup in her hands.
Talia and Bane could see the last of the fight fall away from the political socialite.
"Please," Clara finally said as she looked up and met Talia's eyes.
"You just need to speak to me," Talia murmured as she took Clara's cup and made her another potent espresso cocktail.
Clara accepted the drink as she watched Bane cross the room, the jacket he'd thrown over his shoulders made him even more deliberately broad-shouldered and impressive.
Clara and Talia were so involved in talking neither noticed when Bane momentarily became rooted to the spot when his eyes landed on the fuchsia blown glass parrot that Barsad had left in her room.
Bane's fingers twitched as he stared at the glass bird with the grossly oversized beak.
Real parrots would often sneak into the vast sunroom and eat freely from the bowls of fresh fruit next to carafes of alcoholic punch, actively bleeding fat drops of condensation down the side of the glass pitchers.
Bane returned to standing in the patio doorway, growing still as he listened to Talia question Clara.
"Where did you find out about these plutonium caches?"
Clara took a long sip of the potent cocktail, "I overheard a conversation," she lamely murmured.
"Clara," Talia stated until she had the entirety of the political socialites attention.
"I heard my dad talking on the phone," Clara said before she took a long sip, adding, "I'm not sure who he was talking to."
Talia nodded in approval, "who's your father's contact in the executive branch?"
Clara shook her head, "it doesn't go higher than my father."
Talia arched an eyebrow, "really? He isn't running someone else's orders?"
Clara chuckled, "no, he runs the whole show, don't be fooled by his jovial public persona, my father can be quite shrewd, calculating."
As Talia continued to press Clara for information about exactly what her father was composed, across the estate, the Crimson King's second-in-command, Jupiter, shielded his eyes from the glaring rays of the sun.
He orbited the Crimson King; he was a zealot incarnate.
Kneeling in front of the Crimson King was a man with black hair, a scorpion adorned his skinny throat.
The man had planned an attempt on the Crimson King's life.
The man was dead the moment he birthed the thought of threatening the Crimson King.
The man who had the inky black predatory arachnid permanently decorating his skin had planned on making the attempt on the Crimson King's life when he attended the upcoming mass.
The Crimson King bent the knee weekly to Mother Mary.
He'd lined the road to the compound with the crucified interlopers, saboteur's and any that whispered his name in collusion with others.
The dirt road to the Crimson King's was not the healing and changing road as it was to Damascus, no dropping to your knees and having the light of God shine down upon you, rising with a changed name.
The bumpy path to the well-armed estate was lined with the freshly dead to those that were so stripped of flesh that they were now barely sinew.
The local birds in the region were quite fond of the Crimson King, the avian society as a whole was pleased with his methods.
Each person that faced the Crimson King's judgement before their wrists were impaled with nine-inch nails was a warm, sometimes still moving meal for the birds of the sky.
The soft tissue went first, the eyes were popped and deflated, becoming flaccid sacs hanging from orbital sockets.
As the man's carotid pulse pounded under the tattooed segmented tail of the scorpion, back in Clara's suite, Talia steered her interrogation to some lighter, softball questions.
"Is there anyone that you're missing back at home?"
Clara chuckled and looked down at her cup, close to empty as she'd practically gulped it down, anxious for the alcohol to numb her growing anxiety at Talia's wave of questions and smother the headache.
"Charles," Clara finally said, adding quickly upon Talia's interest. "My tortoise."
Charles was twenty-one years old. He'd been part of the Leroux home before Clara was born.
Clara missed Charles but wasn't plagued with worry for his health and well-being because Charles was assigned a caretaker.
Phinneas Applegate was paid weekly and quite well for taking care of Clara Leroux's tortoise.
As Talia and Clara continued talking, the booze flowed right along with their exchanged words.
Bane had a front-row seat to Clara and Talia, talking, laughing and in a way, getting to know each other.
From afar, they looked like they were two friends, drinking and spending the morning gossiping.
Once the alcohol began to take effect, Talia was really able to pull words from Clara.
Talia explained what she wanted from Clara, how her days would be spent in contact with her dark web associates.
Talia wanted her to keep the home fires burning, as though nothing was amiss.
Talia wanted Clara to continue to embody the Raven, to chirp and sing to her illicit friends and dangerous allies amidst the dark web.
Outside Clara's room, on the other side of the wall, peering through the manmade spyhole, Barsad pressed his hands to the wall as he squinted into the room, finding Clara and Talia laughing while holding stark white coffee mugs and Bane standing like a carved stone statue in the corner.
He waffled between anger and jealousy that Bane got the view he wanted, Barsad clenched his teeth until his jaw popped when his limited free time came to an end.
Barsad stomped angrily to where the Crimson King was rendering judgement to the man whose skinny throat was adorned with the arachnid, boasting a bulbous stinging tail.
He took a wide berth around the stone cistern on the property, if one stepped too close, the strong hydrogen sulfide would rob you of your life.
Barsad didn't understand why he'd been requested to attend the trial.*
He hadn't been requested at first.
Bane had been paying close attention to where Barsad's eyes moved when Clara was around. He'd instructed Lieutenant Jupiter to utilize Barsad when he could, he led Jupiter to believe that Barsad had aspirations for a life at the feet of the Crimson King.
Barsad's expression remained completely neutral as Jupiter dragged a blade across the throat of the condemned.
The blade bisected the tattooed body of the arachnid as it opened the guilty man's throat. The tempered steel sliced through the flesh until the cervical vertebrae was exposed.
If the predatory, eight-legged tattoo had been real, at night, its bisected body would've glowed from where it was nailed up on the cross with the fluorescent properties of its exoskeleton.
It wasn't a real scorpion though; he would decay like everyone else before him and every guilty man afterwards.